


doomed but meant to be

by ozonecologne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alt!Castiel - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, M/M, Pre-Season/Series 13, Unrequited Love, except not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-07 09:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11055894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozonecologne/pseuds/ozonecologne
Summary: When the brothers embark on their mission to rescue Mary from the alternate universe that Lucifer pulled her into, they didn't expect to find yet another familiar face.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> pre-season 13 speculation.  
> This started as a series of drabbles on [my tumblr page.](http://www.ozonecologne.tumblr.com) You can reblog them all [here!](http://ozonecologne.tumblr.com/post/161279082853/hey-why-not-one-more-part-1-part-2-part-3-he)

“Mom,” Dean gasps, relieved beyond measure. It had been exhausting cutting their way through hoards of demons and angels alike, but they’d finally found her among the wreckage. “You’re ok.”

Sam raised an eyebrow, spattered with black gore. “And in charge, apparently.”

Mary made an embarrassed little gesture, the beret on her head tipping down slightly. “There’s no nationalities here anymore. Just people. All of us, united against this. It’s what I wanted from the beginning.”

Dean nods; he can appreciate the simplicity. “Still, you look like you did pretty well for yourself.”

Mary smiles, small and secret. “Well, I had some help from a friend.” 

She looks over her shoulder. Dean and Sam twist to look as well.

From around a pillar of stone comes a snatch of a coat whipping in the wind, not tan but _black_ , but the eyes are still the same.

Dean’s lips part in surprise. Sam gives an awed smile. “Cas,” he says.

This Castiel joins Mary’s side and sticks his hands into the pocket of his coat. “Hello,” he says, stiffly but almost shyly. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Dean’s heart drops to somewhere around his knees. _I’ve heard._ Because this is a world where Sam and Dean never existed. Castiel has never met them before.

Castiel looks at him. “You must be Dean,” he says, but it’s _wrong_. The voice is the same, but the way it says his name isn’t. The tenderness that comes with the sort of friendship they had is totally absent, and it’s so jarring that Dean actually feels like he’s going to cry.

What is it with the revived and his expectations lately?

Dean swallows past the lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he croaks.

It’s been six months since Castiel died in the real world. They threw themselves into finding a way to save the one person they could, and now they have _this_ to deal with.

Or, well, Dean does. Castiel turns to Sam and says, “I hear I’m a ‘hugger’” and Sam swoops him up into an embrace, laughing loudly and slapping him on the back like nothing’s amiss. Like this is a gift.

It’s not. It’s just twisting the knife deeper.

“Dean?” Mary asks him.

He snaps his eyes back to her. He shakes his head and turns on his heel.

He can feel the familiar weight of a pair of eyes boring holes into his back as he walks away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based on [this](http://ozonecologne.tumblr.com/post/161163912348/idrilearfalas-how-i-imagine-it-will-happen-ps)

“There’s a garrison stationed to the north of here,” Castiel says, pointing on the map Sam’s laid out in Mary’s tent. “You won’t be able to make it back without running into them.”

Mary furrows her brow. “We could take the eastern road. It’s steep, but they won’t hear us coming.”

Bobby nods. “We could do it.”

Castiel’s lip twitches. “It would also delay your journey by two days at the least. You can’t afford that kind of time before your portal closes.”

He looks up and Dean catches his eyes for a minute. The contact doesn’t last long; Castiel is already spouting off alternate strategies, ever the master tactician. The group gathered around them leans in at his every word, humans and angels and even some demons alike falling over themselves to catch the words. 

Dean says nothing when Castiel looks away, back to the map. He, unlike the others, doesn’t lean in. He doesn’t hang on Castiel’s every word. He licks his lips and crosses his arms tighter across his chest. 

“I could take a squadron and draw them out,” Castiel suggests, but he sighs when he says it, like he’s not happy about it. The real Cas would never have sounded this put out. “Buy you time.”

“No,” Dean snaps, out of instinct.

Castiel looks at him again, this time for longer. The other eyes in the tent follow his. He tilts his head and Dean’s heart jumps up into his throat. 

Dean stands from his chair in the corner and moves towards the exit, away from the aghast and confused stares. 

“Let me know when we’ve got a plan,” he grumbles, slapping the tent flaps aside. 

Sam’s hands twitch against the makeshift table like he wants to follow, but doesn’t know if he should. Mary grabs his wrist and shakes her head.

They’ve been tiptoeing around him for days. All of them.

Castiel stares at the swaying door like if he looks long enough Dean might come back and help them figure this out. He turns back towards the map with a sigh. What a nuisance humans are, and how selfish. “The west, of course, is crawling with Lucifer’s new pack, so that will not be - ”

“Cas,” Mary cuts in. He stops talking. “Maybe we should take a break.”

Sam smiles at him sheepishly. “We’re all tired, man,” he says.

Castiel narrows his eyes. “Right, yes. Tired,” he says, tongue and teeth awkwardly colliding around a foreign concept. 

“We can brainstorm some more later,” Sam says.

Castiel frowns. “We’re only wasting time debating this. You’ll be trapped here forever and the balance of the universe will tip and who _knows_ what will happen then.”

“It can’t be worse than this, right?” Mary offers, a slight twist to her mouth.

Castiel feels his own lips twitch. “Hm,” he says, nearly a laugh.

He learns much from her, daily. Things that he didn’t realize were broken in him, forced to fit in a desperate time of war by conditioning and by repression, now make sense suddenly. He doesn’t know what to do with this new knowledge or these new pieces of himself; they don’t belong on the battlefield. He can examine them later, when their war is won and the Winchesters have returned to their proper time and place. He never used to laugh before this and he can’t figure out if that’s a good thing or if it’s just sad.

He looks at the tent flaps again, cracking in the wind outside. Something pulls at the core of him. He doesn’t listen to it. 

Now is not the time.

  
Dean proves equally as uncooperative the next time they meet as well. Once again, he shoots down Castiel’s bid for a diversion.

“Then please, Dean,” Castiel says, exasperated, hands flat against the table. “Offer another suggestion.”

Dean grinds his teeth and doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t make eye contact and swallows against the lump in his throat. “Splitting up _never_ works,” he insists.

Castiel rolls his eyes. “It’s called strategy. Efficiency? Delegation?” he bites.

Dean shakes his head and doesn’t answer beyond that.

Sam, trying to defuse the tension in the room, clears his throat. “I gotta admit, Cas, this _is_  cutting it a little close. I mean, if you do draw the angels west, into Lucifer’s territory, I don’t know if you’ll be able to get out in time.”

Castiel frowns, taken aback. “In time for what?”

Sam blinks at him. “The portal,” he says, a _duh_ tone to his voice. “You know the spell that got us here only lasts until the next moon. We can’t wait and Dean’s right - if we’re all closer together there’s a better chance we’ll all make it through.”

Castiel just stares, and Sam’s face starts to fall.

“Cas,” he says slowly. “You’re - you are coming with us. Right?”

Dean jerks his head up at that, eyes locked on the angel. He picks up snatches of a memory: another dark gray and dangerous world, another portal closing behind him -

Castiel shakes his head, slowly. “That was never the plan, Sam,” he says slowly, and he can see Sam’s shoulders drop in disappointment. “I’m meant to stay here.”

He leans back behind the table, composing himself, and glances around the table. Mary’s face is stony, but she doesn’t argue. Bobby looks… almost relieved. 

Dean, though.

Dean looks gutted.

Castiel holds out his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“No you’re not,” Dean scoffs. The sound is wet and barely audible.

“Dean,” Sam scolds.

“What,” Dean hisses back, eyes shiny. “Hey, fuck you for even thinking it, Sam. You should know better by now.”

Sam’s face hardens. “He’s our _friend_.”

“He doesn’t even know us,” Dean snaps. His face breaks out into a wry smile suddenly, not mad anymore but clear. “You know what? I don’t care anymore. I’m done pretending with you. Ok? I can’t take it.”

He stands, looking at Mary. “I came here for you. No one else. So you just tell me where to go and I’ll get there.”

He tries to storm out again like he had at the last meeting, but Castiel darts into his path, blocking his exit. He is _furious_ , Dean recognizes the look on his face. He thinks Dean is being a whiny, ungrateful brat and he’s totally justified in that.

“You are  _unbearable,_ ” Castiel tells him. “We need every soldier’s cooperation for a plan of this scale to work, and you have been a stubborn, resistant _asshole_ at every possible juncture.”

Dean scoffs. “Sounds like me.”

Castiel takes a menacing step forward and his eyes narrow to slits. “That’s all you have to say, boy? Nothing constructive, nothing useful, what are you even good for if not - ”

“Hey,” Mary interjects. “Don’t talk to my son like that.”

Castiel reels back, eyes alight, and sneers. He’s about to tear into Dean again, really give this insouciant human a piece of his mind, when he feels it again. That tug on what’s left of his grace. He looks at Dean’s face and feels the anger drain out of him.

Dean’s not fighting back. He lets every one of Castiel’s harsh words stick into him like daggers and he doesn’t bother to remove them, to tend to the wounds.

“There are things left unresolved for you,” Castiel says, a little softer now. “Something is preventing you from focusing on this mission, here and now.” 

Dean doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t look away from Castiel either. “What is it?” Castiel coaxes.

Dean swallows. “We have to do this now?”

A couple people in the tent shuffle their feet awkwardly, torn between watching and fleeing. Castiel nods once, sharply. “Yes, I think we do.”

“Oh boy,” Bobby mutters.

But Castiel’s mind is already spinning. “If you get over whatever it is, you’ll be of more use here,” he concludes. “So what is it that has you so distracted?”

Dean shakes his head. His eyes are - they’re cloudy. Tears, Castiel realizes. Tears threatening to spill over. 

“You,” he tries, cutting himself off. “You’re him, but you’re not.”

Castiel blinks. His expression doesn’t change - it is not the answer he was expecting. “No. I’m not.”

Dean shakes his head again, holding his hands out to his sides, helpless. “You have any idea how much that hurts?”

Castiel frowns. “No,” he answers. Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t _hurt_ like humans do. He simply hasn’t been around them for long enough.

Dean searches his face, mouth parted, cheeks flushed. One tear finally spills out and rolls down his cheek, stopping halfway down and sticking. “Well let me help you out a bit,” he says, squaring his shoulders a little. “It feels like _dying._ Every time I look at you and you talk with his voice and you say my name wrong, I _die_ a little inside.”

“But how can that be true?” Castiel asks. He steps forward again, closer to Dean, seeking answers. “You have witnessed so many horrible things in your life. Why should _this_  be the thing that breaks you?”

Dean deflates. His lip trembles. 

“Dean,” Sam consoles softly.

“I love you.”

A muffled murmur winds its way through the tent. Mary averts her eyes and Bobby does the same. Sam just looks sad. 

Castiel, well, he isn’t sure what his own face does.

“I can’t help it,” Dean adds.

Castiel takes a breath through his nose. He doesn’t have to, but it settles him. “I don’t feel the same.”

Dean drops his eyes now to the floor. He wipes at the tears and then his nose with his sleeve. 

“Yeah. I know.”

Castiel isn’t sure what to say, but it turns out he doesn’t have to say anything. Dean beats him to it. “That’s what sucks. Because you said it once, already. I thought we had time but it turns out we didn’t. And now…” 

He laughs, once, bitter.

“Now I guess it’s too late.”

Something snaps in Castiel, like a bond being broken, and he feels this strange sort of sadness overtake him. “Dean…”

Dean laughs. “Ha. There, that - ” he points a finger. “That was pretty good. Just like old times.”

Castiel reaches up and presses a hand down on his chest. It… aches.

“You gonna let me go now, or what?” Dean sniffs, nodding at the door.

Castiel looks at him for a long moment. The green of his eyes, clouded over by red.

He steps aside.

Dean nods and walks around him. Castiel doesn’t watch him go.

Rather, he feels it.


	3. Chapter 3

He isn’t listening. He knows he isn’t. He should be going over these armory stocks more closely with Bobby, trusty Rufus propped up against his leg, but his attention is drawn elsewhere.

Dean sits as he always does in the corner, with his face drawn and his shoulders squared like he’s expecting a fight. He cleans and puts together guns so quickly that you’d know on sight he’s been doing it his whole life.

Castiel narrows his eyes at him, searching beneath the surface.

“Hey. Earth to Castiel?”

Castiel looks up. Bobby is giving him a Look that he doesn’t really appreciate but he bites his tongue, knowing that he’s in the wrong. “Sorry. Go on,” he says.

Bobby rolls his eyes, contorts his mouth a little, and continues what he was saying earlier. 

Dean doesn’t look up once. His hands don’t slow or shake.

Mary comes in, unloading leftover ammo from their latest raid. “Sam and I are taking count outside. You can put these back into the stockpile,” she says cheerfully.

Bobby whistles. Mary smiles, eyes clear and alert. This may be a war zone, but she still looks like she’s thriving. Like she believes in her cause. It’s pure, here.

She turns and sees Dean in the corner and her smile softens. Castiel is prepared with a thousand questions about how the raid went, how many were lost, what kind of monsters - but Mary steps away before he can ask any of them.

She puts a hand on Dean’s head, petting his hair. Dean’s hands finally stop. He looks up.

“Hey,” Mary says to him, private and sweet. “Doing ok?”

Dean nods, a small smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. One of few that Castiel’s ever witnessed, it’s fragile but honest. “Yeah, for now. You?”

“Barely even a scratch,” she says. “Sorry you missed it.”

Dean shakes his head. “You got it covered, Mom.”

She pats his head once more and steps back, nodding. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Yep.”

“I love you, Dean,” she adds.

He swallows. “Yep.”

Mary waves at him first, then at Castiel and Bobby, and leaves, ruffling her hair with her unbandaged hand.

Castiel stares and loses his place in Bobby’s report again.

How can so much love fit into these broken shells of people, he wonders. He watches Dean work for a few more seconds.

“Look, if you got something better to do - ”

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says, finally tearing his eyes away. “Continue. Please.”

 

He finds Dean in his private quarters, the tent he shares with Sam on the outskirts of the resistance camp. He’s not entirely sure why he came, but that feeling earlier, that crack-pop-wheeze of pain that he couldn’t locate the source of, maybe that’s what compelled him here. Following Dean’s baseless yet heartfelt confession he feels guilty even though he doesn’t have to. Maybe that’s why he says,

“If we - maybe we could try to - ”

Dean scoffs at him, disgusted.

Castiel frowns, assessing. “You’re insulted,” he determines.

Dean throws a baleful look in his direction, weariness lining every inch of his body. “I don’t want your pity fuck, Castiel.”

Castiel sucks a breath in through his nose and tries not to get frustrated. He can practically taste the misery in the room. “I’m just… trying to help, Dean.”

Dean looks up and regards Castiel for a minute. Something on his face must convince him of something, because he moves across the room with purpose in his eyes.

He stands toe to toe with him at the door. Castiel thinks bizarrely for a moment that he might kiss him, but he doesn’t. He leans forward and wraps Castiel in a hug.

It’s a good one, too, as far as hugs go. The kind that presses them together front to front, legs tangled, arms tight, noses pressed to necks. Castiel, stunned, lets Dean breathe him in for a minute and can’t muster up any sort of response.

“How it feels when I hold you?” Dean murmurs, close to the skin. “That’s what home is.”

Castiel’s mouth drops open a little. He hesitantly holds Dean back, feeling the curves of his bones and his muscles beneath his hands. And, strangely, some of himself. Traces of his grace from another world, another life, squirming beneath the surface. He’s awed by it, by this feeling of closeness. Even with his brothers and sisters before the war, he hasn’t felt this.

Dean laughs wetly and squeezes. “I never even got to say goodbye.”

Castiel, dazed, rubs a circle into Dean’s back. “Maybe this is your second chance,” he blurts. “Maybe this - ”

“Don’t.”

He pulls back from the hug. Castiel lets him but his arms stay half-extended towards empty air, bereft. Something pulls on his center like a chain hooked into him, and he is helpless under its sway. He watches as Dean tries to school his features, some doubt and tender emotion still leaking through the cracks of his mask. Castiel blinks and tilts his head.

“I want to understand,” he tells him, determined.

Conflicted, Dean lifts a hand. It trembles faintly in the air, like the last leaf of autumn, before it lands on Castiel’s cheek. He can feel every jagged edge of the skin cells and the callouses on Dean’s hands, rasping against those of his own vessel, his own body, and he doesn’t think that any other sensation could compare to it. He’s not nervous, exactly, nor excited, just intensely curious almost to the point of anger.

What exactly has this bleak universe stolen from him?

Dean kisses him softly, with more gentleness than a warrior like Castiel needs or deserves. Castiel lets him, eyes open even when Dean’s close. He doesn’t touch, doesn’t do anything except feel this moment, these wondrous foreign hands sliding into his hair, to cradle the back of his skull as if this cage of flesh and bone were precious to someone. Jimmy Novak died alone in the first wave of fiery wrath; this body has no point of reference for this. It is new and discomforting and…

And _nice_.

 _This is what home is_ , Dean had said. He has no point of reference for that, either.

Someone clears their throat. Dean reluctantly pulls away, his eyes turned down. As is often the case nowadays, Castiel has a hard time tearing his eyes away from Dean’s face.

Sam Winchester is standing in the doorway of the tent. His mouth is a straight line. 

“Just came to grab you for dinner,” he says, strained.

Dean bites his lip. “Yeah, thanks,” he replies, a dismissal.

Sam hesitates, lingering in the door with those hard eyes. He meets Castiel’s gaze for a second and then he turns away, hands in his pockets.

Dean follows his brother without another word. Keeps his head down and strides away. The back of his neck is flushed. 

Castiel watches, head tilted. He brings two fingers to his own lips and frowns. 

This didn’t make things clearer at all.

 

They move their camp, the ragtag few of them struggling for peace in this small area of charred ground. Castiel doesn’t offer to help, and nobody asks him to. He goes ahead and scouts their path. He stands on mountaintops, cloaked in smog and ash, and wishes he could see the stars from here.

Earth was once God’s most precious and beautiful creation. They’ve tainted that by interfering here. Hands just like Castiel’s have smote the innocence from the world.

What a waste.

He sighs and coasts down the mountainside, into the jagged pass that will cover them for the night. He scores a ward into the rock face, hoping that it will be enough to hide behind.

Mary Winchester sits at the base of the mountain.

He doesn’t sit beside her, but stands. She lets him. 

“Hi,” she says, tired. A graze on her arm bleeds sluggishly and she does nothing about it. “All clear?”

“All clear,” Castiel confirms with a nod. 

“Thanks.”

Castiel shrugs. “Don’t thank me,” he insists, quiet but firm.

Mary looks at up him from the ground. He hadn’t noticed before, but she has a metal flask dangling from one hand. She offers it up to him but he waves it off.

She shrugs and swigs again, spits into the dirt at her feet.

She, like Sam and Dean, had recognized him immediately when they happened upon each other in the midst of a battle - one waged against Lucifer, of all people. Castiel was already committed to protecting Earth as it was; Mary was just endearing.

They look out over the camp together, unlikely companions.

“Something on your mind?” she asks.

He might as well just come out and ask it. “Were we happy?” he asks, less a question and more like a confession. “In your world. Was I happy?”

Mary hesitates. She sighs, sags against the rocks. “I don’t think so. Not all the way.”

Castiel nods with a locked jaw and pretends like this news doesn’t disappoint him.

Mary looks at him again, though, not finished. “But at least you had somewhere to go.”

Castiel sniffs. His eyes catch on movement not far away: the tall and tense forms of the brothers pacing around in the dirt.

 _You know that’s not him, Dean! You said so yourself!_ he hears.

_I know, ok? I know. Just get off my case, Sam._

_I’m not going to watch you do this to yourself! It isn’t fair, to you or to him._

Castiel averts his eyes.

 

Castiel doesn’t usually eat dinner with the humans at camp. The angels don’t really talk to him and the demons certainly don’t want to spend any extra time with him, so during meals he tends to just… wander. Scrutinize the people that are sitting down and maybe do what he can to keep the troops in fighting shape - healing bones, settling nerves with a touch.

While the newest Winchesters’ presences have rocked camp dynamics, everyone seems content to leave the two additions alone. Sam is only slightly more social, smiling to anyone that gets close and occasionally starting a conversation, but Dean keeps his head down and doesn’t speak beyond what he is asked. One of the angels got too close to Sam for his liking once and he buried the point of a knife in their hand. Not many get close, now.

Castiel risks it.

“Hello, Dean. Sam.”

Sam looks less than pleased to see him, but his expression only darkens when he hears those words. “Um. Hey. What’s up?”

He shrugs. “I heard you did well at the last raid,” he said, and Sam responds with a hesitantly proud smile. “I was wondering if you were hurt. I could help.”

Sam sniffs and shakes his head. “I’m ok, thanks.” 

Castiel narrows his eyes and does a quick assessment. Sam’s right leg is giving him some trouble but he is confident that he can push past it. His head hurts him and so does his wrist. He has a large bruise over one side of his ribcage. 

He’s been lied to. It doesn’t feel good.

“If you say so,” Castiel says, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. Sam looks up and Castiel sees the defiance and challenge in his eyes. No wonder at all that this is the boy that saved the world once.

He turns sharply and addresses Dean instead, who has always been more truthful with him. “And how are you?”

Dean blinks at him, stirs the contents of his food bowl with something like disdain. “Peachy,” he says, voice light.

Castiel stares at him. Dean stares back. 

Sam scoffs to himself and gets up. “Whatever,” he mumbles.

Dean ducks his head as Sam walks away from the table, fingers loosening around his spoon. He has bags under his eyes and somehow Castiel knows that it isn’t from the stress of combat.

He slides into Sam’s abandoned seat. “How are you _really?_ ”

Dean glances up, surprise coloring his features. “I don’t know,” he practically mumbles.

“Oh?” Castiel asks, facetious. 

Dean frowns. He looks at Castiel and then shakes his head.

“I miss you, man,” he says, and what a difficult sentiment for Castiel to understand.

He reaches out and touches the back of Dean’s hand. He jerks under Castiel’s fingers, but he doesn’t pull away. He allows Castiel to stay there for a minute, rubbing the peaks of his knuckles and living vicariously through the rabbit-quick beat of his heart.

Castiel takes in a shaky breath. Feels it echoed back to him. Something pulls on him again, towards a tipping point.

 _I think,_ he wants to say, _that I’ve been missing you, too._

 

He stays away from Dean after that. Sam very clearly doesn’t approve, Dean is in a constant state of self-loathing, and Bobby gets more annoyed by the day that Castiel’s thoughts appear to be elsewhere. He has a job to do - this is war - and he can’t afford to be bothered by a selfish need to belong somewhere. Mary never should have offered him kindness all those months ago; he would never have craved this sort of feeling otherwise.

They choose their strategy, and Dean looks pleased. They aren’t splitting up, they’re forming lines. The Winchesters are at the back, escorted to their portal, and the rest of them are laid out in front to keep bad things from following them through to another world, ripe for the plundering. 

Lucifer, still at large, has no doubt gotten word of the opening. He will try to lay siege.

“We stop for _nothing_ ,” Castiel tells the company firmly. “We move quickly and silently. Anyone that lags behind will be left.”

Mary rolls her eyes, arms crossed over her chest, but she doesn’t contradict him. Sam’s face is grim but Castiel can read that he agrees with him.

He rubs distractedly as his chest while he continues to lay out their strategy, hoping to relieve some of the ache that’s lingering there. He winces and draws his hand away, hoping it will stop soon. 

 

There were things waiting for them at the portal location, just as Castiel assumed there would be. Crowds of dark beasts clamoring for power, some already launching themselves through the rift at will, some torn to actual pieces by its pull. Castiel and Mary and Bobby start barking out orders, reforming their lines, and herd Sam and Dean behind them.

One of the angels escorts Mary to the portal first, suffering a blade in the back for his trouble. Mary jumps through and doesn’t look back. 

Sam and Dean’s path has been cut off - they don’t have a clear shot to their escape. The red sun is slowly falling behind the mountains, and it won’t be long until darkness falls and their way out is gone forever.

Castiel sees this and he takes initiative. He throws his blade like a dart and then grabs the second one concealed in his other sleeve. Sam grabs Dean’s arm and sprints across the battlefield. Dean keeps glancing over his shoulder.

Castiel cuts down the enemies in front of him and pants, twisting. They have to had made it through. They have to be -

Dean is staring at him, dust smeared down his clothes and fear in his eyes. The portal shimmers and wavers behind him like a candle flame in a strong breeze, fighting to stay bright and alive. 

“Cas?” he asks, his voice lost to the wind.

Castiel looks to the portal. Looks back at Dean. 

Dean’s eyes widen for a second at whatever expression he sees. His mouth slackens. His fingers twitch.

“Go,” Castiel mouths.

Dean moves to take a step forward - away from the portal, towards Castiel, with that inquisitive and maybe hopeful look on his face. Before he can set his foot down, Sam grabs a fistful of Dean’s jacket and yanks. 

Dean’s face warps back into fear, horror even, pale and grave, and he doesn’t even get the first syllable out as he’s dragged through the rift. It snaps closed behind him.

Castiel stares for a few moments more at the space where Dean stood. The weight on his chest is gone now, replaced by something deeper. Kindling from the inside.He only knows the feeling now that it’s gone.

Longing.

He can hear more coming. Over the hills, blades and weapons raised, ready to crucify him for his disobedience. For his resistance. Lucifer’s defeated howl echoes through the valley and he knows that a rampage will follow it. Castiel touches his lips once more with his fingers.

He thinks that he could have loved Dean someday, if they had the time. But they didn’t, they really are too late just as Dean said, they are ships passing in the emptiness of space, fingers outstretched for one another and never touching. Dean is not his future and never was.

But if he has to die for anything, let it be for love. That is who he is. He feels it more deeply than any calling God or Heaven or any angel has ever issued to him. He can avenge and defend a love that was supposed to be his.

He lifts his chin to face the oncoming hoard.


	4. Chapter 4

They're back at the water, that familiar site that this alternate dimension appears to be rooted to. The portal snaps closed right before Dean’s eyes; one minute there is a flash of rippling golden light, and then there is simply the darkness of the night around him.

Dean screams, angry and anguished and hopeless, and the effort knocks the strength right out of his legs. He careens recklessly into the dirt as the sound of his cry echoes through the mountain valley.

He sits there, panting, and hears Sam shuffle his feet behind him. Gravel on rubber.

“Dean,” he says, softly.

Dean looks over his shoulder, hunched on his hands and knees on the ground. “He could have come with us!” he shouts. “Why did you stop me?”

Sam slides down next to his brother and grips his shoulder with his big hands. Hands that, right now, Dean resents more than anything else in the world.

“That was our last shot,” Dean chokes. “He was _right there_.”

The first of his tears start to fall, staining the earth dark where they land. Sam hauls Dean to his side as easily as he had hauled him through space-time, with all the courage and strength of a lifelong love, and fiercely bites his own lip while his brother falls apart in his arms. “It wasn’t him,” Sam says. “I’m sorry, Dean, but it wasn’t.”

“It was. It was. I saw him.”

Just a few feet away, Mary watches her boys huddle together into the dust, quiet sniffles ushering in the break of a new day.

 

 _This is my fault,_ she thinks. She and Sam have managed to lead Dean into the lake house, now that he’s too tired to protest. Every inch of him sags with exhaustion. Maybe she shouldn’t have been the one to bring Castiel back into her son’s life. She had disrupted his cycle of grieving with a false hope; he would have to start over now.

She had thought she was doing something good. Giving him closure. She barely had time to mourn Castiel herself before the panic of fighting another war had crashed over her and his carbon copy swooped in to help. 

Dean takes up residence at the rickety kitchen table. Three chairs. Mary declines hers. Sam, also, does not sit.

Dean rubs at his forehead with his hand and sighs. “Well,” he croaks. “Now what.”

Sam blows out a breath. “I don’t know,” he murmurs. “Jack’s set up working on Jesse and Cesar’s farm, Lucifer’s banished for good, and Mom was kind of our last loose end,” he finishes.

Dean continues to rub at his headache. “So?”

“So,” Sam says. “Whatever we want?”

Dean almost cracks a smile at that.

“What I _want_ ,” Mary grumbles. “Is a beer.”

Dean outright barks a laugh. “Seconded.”

Sam meets her eyes, and Mary looks away. She turns and opens up the first cabinet she sees, in search of anything to keep her mind and her hands otherwise occupied.

It’s empty.

She tries the one next to it.

Also empty.

“Well, it doesn’t look terribly well stocked,” she laments.

Sam hums, but Mary freezes when she opens the next cabinet.

Affixed to the back of the cabinet door with a lone piece of scotch tape is a sheet of lined paper. It’s already curled at the edges from being left out in the wet air for so long.

She gingerly takes it down and smoothes it in her hands. Her eyes skim over the page, faint writing left in pencil in an unfamiliar hand.

“What’s that?” Sam asks her.

Mary frowns. “I’m not sure.”

Sam comes up behind her and takes the paper. She lets him have it.

“Front sconce light, third stair, upstairs bedroom, back porch,” Sam reads off, brow furrowed. “Looks like a to-do list.”

“The front light works fine,” Mary comments.

“And the stairs don’t even creak,” Sam adds. “As for the bedroom - ”

“Kelly already painted it.”

Sam and Mary turn around to face Dean, who is now sitting ramrod straight at the table.

He clears his throat. “The light, the stairs, the bedroom. They were all - ”

“Move-in projects,” Sam finishes. He looks back down at the paper in his hand. “Now that you mention it, the handwriting is definitely… familiar.”

He carefully hands the paper out for Dean.

He regards it warily, lip wobbling, but ultimately takes it between two fingers. He turns it around and takes in a cracked sigh as he reads the list to himself. His devastated face says it all; the house was Castiel’s new mission.

Mary turns her eyes down in shame once more.

“There is no back porch, though,” Sam says, when Dean offers nothing of his own to fill the silence. “You think he was going to build one?”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Mary says. Sam whips his head towards her and glares, eyes darting hurriedly back toward Dean in the corner.

Dean clutches the paper tightly between his hands.

 

“I’m staying.”

“You’re - ” Sam starts, jerking backward. “You’re _staying_?”

Dean only nods. “Yeah.”

Sam shakes his head. “What, here?”

“Yeah, Sam. Here.”

Sam looks out through the small window at the vista, at the still water, at the steadily rising sun, and blurts, “Why? What are you going to do up here?”

Dean’s thought about this. When he buried Castiel, he buried a piece of his heart here. He's gone and lost him for good twice now, and twice is more than enough. He doesn’t break his gaze and he doesn’t hesitate as he exhales through his nose and says:

“I’m gonna build me a porch.”

 

Dean doesn’t get a lot of cell reception up in the mountains, but he does have a mailbox. He does have access to a USPS truck that pulls up every Monday with the mail. At first - as Dean reports to Sam in his monthly update letter - all that comes in are baby catalogues and parenting magazines with the subscription under the name “James Novak,” which he doesn’t bother to cancel. He kind of likes getting them, he confesses. He stacks them up by the only working toilet in the house. They’re good reading material. He gets surprisingly good recipes in there.

Eventually the magazines stop coming. Castiel’s card is no longer available to pay the subscription fees. Dean just lets them run out and doesn’t check the mailbox nearly as frequently.

In the meantime, he does his best to build a respectable porch off the back of the house. It’s slow going all by himself, but the hard work distracts him from the empty space by the water. He finds himself glancing there out of the corners of his eyes less and less as the weeks wear on.

A cold front passes in and halts construction for a while. Dean does his best not to work in the wet weather, with temperatures reaching as cold as he’s ever felt in his whole long and miserable life, but leaving it unfinished is like an itch. He feels guilty every morning that he wakes up and sees the blue tarp and untouched construction tools slowly being blanketed by white.

It was the last thing that Castiel didn’t get to fix. Dean is going to put him to rest, god dammit, and this is the only way he knows how to say goodbye. With blood, sweat, and tears.

In the meantime, the house becomes lived in. Fires now warm its hearths as the winter wears on. The lights burn brightly when they can, shining out the windows. Cobwebs are cleared from the corners and new ones form around the new resident’s patterns. The upstairs bedroom, the one with J A C K painted on the wall, stays sealed. Dean sleeps on a bed that an innocent woman died in. The little marker that Dean set out in the back for Castiel becomes a measuring stick for the snow. Old ghosts haunting a Winchester, how bout that.

The gray months are the loneliest. Dean doesn’t have yard work to worry about, so he spends his time fixing leaky faucets and patching holes in the roof and painting the walls and watching soap operas. The extra wood for the porch can’t just sit there getting wet all season, so Dean tries to find other uses for the surplus. He takes up woodworking, of all things. He makes a few tiny carvings, whittling away by the light of the stove when the power goes out six days in a row. He brings buckets of snow into the house to warm up for drinking and bathing. It reminds him of a really terrible camping trip.

The tone of Sam’s letters gets more and more concerned.

The second that the sun comes out and the temperature gets above freezing, Dean is back outside with his hammer.

 

The last day of the thaw, when the crocuses start to crop up around the front door, a familiar car pulls up the drive.

“Hey!” Sam bellows. Dean clunks down the steps and smiles at him.

“Ah, c’mere,” he grumbles, throwing his arms around his brother’s back.

Sam laughs and thumps him twice on the back. “You grew a beard!”

Dean pulls back and rubs his callused hands through the growth along his jaw. Though it’s mostly the red he remembers, there’s gray in it now, too. A mark of survival.

“Yeah,” Dean replies. “Trying something new.”

“Cool,” Sam nods, still grinning.

“Let me get your bag,” Dean says, stepping around him.

Sam puts up a token protest, but he allows Dean to lead him back up the steps and into the house.

Sam puts his hands on his hips and turns around, and he still looks too big for the place. “Huh. It looks pretty good in here,” he says.

Dean snorts. “Thanks.” He dumps Sam’s bag on the couch in the sitting room. “You want a beer?”

“Love one,” Sam calls back. “I don’t remember this moulding,” he adds.

Dean snaps the caps off of the two bottles he extracts from the fridge. “Yeah, uh. Hobby of mine. I have those, now.”

Sam shakes his head. “You’re like a respectable civilian, dude. That’s crazy.” He takes the bottle from Dean’s hands and says, “Thanks.”

They catch up on news. Mom won’t come up to visit, but she does sometimes put a page in with Sam’s letters that Dean looks forward to. Max got into some bad shit not too long ago, but he handled it and is recovering well. Garth and Bess have a gaggle of little kids and they keep threatening to make Sam babysit. Between Claire going full hunter, Alex in nursing school, and Jack growing like a drug resistant virus (smarter and smarter every day), Sam’s kind of worn out and can't figure out how to tell them "no."

“Oh,” Sam says suddenly. “How’s the porch going?” he asks, after his fourth beer. “Gotta say, man, I’m really curious to see how it’s coming along.”

Dean wordlessly sets down his beer, stands up from the kitchen table, and beckons Sam to the back door.

He pulls back the curtain and nods his head. Sam contorts his ridiculous frame to peer out the back, into the melting snow.

“Oh my god,” he breathes. “You finished it.”

Dean nods.

He lets the curtain fall. “It’s got steps down the side," he says. "A little path that goes to the water. When spring hits, we might even get grass out there.”

Sam’s awed face falls.

“We,” he points out. “You said ‘we.’”

Dean gulps. “It’s just an expression,” he says, but that isn’t what he meant and they both know it.

Sam doesn’t say anything, and Dean hasn’t spoken to anyone for a really long time and certainly not about this so he just blurts out, “I can’t think of the house as just mine, you know. I can’t.”

Sam nods. His hair falls into his face and he tucks it behind his ears as best he can. “Yeah, I get it.”

They stare at the back door together.

“You think he’d like it?” Dean asks. “The porch?”

Sam reaches out and squeezes Dean’s shoulder, tighter than before.

“It was never about the porch,” he tells him.

 

When Sam leaves, Dean breaks a vase. He rips the doors off of two cabinets and puts his fist through some drywall.

There. More projects to tackle. More holes to patch up. Another reason to stay.

Dean wipes his tears with the edge of his sleeve the whole walk down to the hardware store. It’s a lot of miles to walk by one’s lonesome in the wilderness, but Dean likes walking. It’s the only real exercise he gets nowadays.

He pulls his hat down lower over his brow and mumbles to himself as he struggles with the keys in his pocket. He picks up his bags and hauls them through the front door, still grumbling. He yanks off the hat and tosses it onto the couch. He’ll hang it to dry in the sink later.

He pauses for a moment, looking at the mess of a kitchen. He carefully sets his bags down, and makes his way to the back door.

It opens quietly, well-loved and often-used. Dean walks out along the stretch of wood that he laid out with his own hands, his last homage to his dead best friend, and leans on his elbows against the railing to stare out at the water. The mountains stand immovable and unconquered in the distance.

He takes a deep breath of cold air and breathes it back out again, cleansed. He feels settled in a way that he hasn’t in a really long time; probably ever, actually. He’s lonely and made his peace with it. He put the past where it should be. There’s freedom in knowing what he wants, even if he knows that he can’t ever have it.

He lowers his eyes and allows himself to look down at the yard.

He was wrong about the grass; the soil is too rocky for anything like that. No lush gardens for him. The small wooden cross that he stuck in one of his first days here - before the snow wiped away all traces of the tar-black wing prints etched into the ground - still stands, where they buried Castiel so very long ago.

In a perfect circle around that spot - and despite all odds - grows a crop of wildflowers.

They wave in the breeze, and they make Dean smile.

“Hey, Cas,” he murmurs at them.

A star with a long tail jets across the sky, and Dean follows it with his eyes. It’s so clear out here; he can see stars all around him on a good night. What none of the star charts will tell him about, though, is that bright gold one in the center of the horizonline, visible from the porch.

He tilts his head when he looks at it, resting his cheek in his palm. “Hey to you, too, buddy.”

It might be a trick of the light, but he would absolutely swear that the color of his mystery star is the exact same color of the magical threshold he crossed through empty-handed once. He likes to think of it as one more peek through a faraway doorway to another world, where another Castiel is alive and well on the other side. The star winks, as if to confirm his suspicions.

Though sorrow weighs heavy on his heart for the losses he's endured, Dean falls asleep peacefully that night knowing that someone in every universe is watching over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND THEN CAS COMES BACK TO LIFE AND THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER THE END  
> I was originally going to write a post-s12 fic where a newly resurrected Castiel and Dean stay in the lake house and fix it up together, but this seemed better.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr!](http://www.ozonecologne.tumblr.com)


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